How to research a suspected astroturf campaign

What an astroturf campaign is

An astroturf campaign is advocacy dressed up as spontaneous public support. The letters, posts, calls, or turnout look local. The planning, the script, or the money may sit with a sponsor the audience never sees. Astroturfing is that practice: manufacturing the appearance of a grassroots campaign. A fake grassroots campaign is the same idea in plainer words. The label is about presentation and sponsorship, not about which side of a debate the message takes.

Ordinary persuasion is not the same thing. Neighbors can organize, a union hall can fill a hearing, and a candidate can ask supporters to write. Those efforts are grassroots when the people speaking are who they say they are and the sponsorship is disclosed. How to identify astroturfing starts by separating the claim of local spontaneity from the records that show who paid, who registered the group, and who was required to put a name on the ad.

This page does not rank messages or name a real committee. The astroturf campaign examples below are hypothetical, so a reader can see the workflow without treating a sketch as a finding about any person or organization.

Warning signs worth a record check

A warning sign is a reason to open a filing. It is not a finding. Use it to decide which record to request, then write down what that record does and does not say.

• The same phrases show up in many local letters, comments, or social posts on the same day, with no local detail a resident would usually add.
• A new group name appears on ads or a website, and the only public footprint is that name.
• A disclaimer names a committee, a corporation, or an organization that is not the group the creative seems to speak for.
• Reported spending, a vendor, or a mailing address matches a different committee than the one the message names.
• People are described as a mass movement, while the only documents you can open show a small board, a single funder, or a paid placement.

None of those signs proves coordination or bad faith. A real local group can reuse a fact sheet. A small organization can still speak for members who exist. The next step is the document, not a louder adjective.

A step-by-step evidence workflow

Work from the message backward. Save the ad, mailer, post, or testimony first: the exact words, the date, the channel, and any disclaimer. Then follow the name on that disclaimer into the public record. The standards for keeping a sentence tied to a document are the same ones on the research methodology page and in how to verify political claims before they reach a campaign memo. A broader map of the practice sits on opposition research and in campaign propaganda.

1. Read the disclaimer and the creative together. Federal advertising rules are summarized by the FEC at Advertising and disclaimers. Write down the name that was required to appear. If a platform library has the placement, open that entry too. Google's public ad library is at adstransparency.google.com.
2. Search federal money under that name. Committee reports, independent expenditures, and other disclosed transactions are in the FEC catalog at fec.gov/data. Note the committee, the report, the period, and whether a later amendment replaced the total. A reported payment shows a disclosed transaction. It does not show why the donor gave.
3. If the race or the issue is state or local, repeat the search in that jurisdiction's campaign-finance portal. A group that never appears in an FEC report may still have a state filing. Cite the state report you opened, not a federal catalog that does not contain it.
4. If the sponsor is a nonprofit, look for an IRS Form 990. The form series is described at About Form 990. A 990 can show officers, reported revenue, and some grant lines for the year filed. It is not a list of every donor, and it is not proof of what a later ad meant.
5. Check Secretary of State business and registration records for the organization's legal name, formation date, registered agent, and status. Match the legal name to the name on the ad before you treat them as one entity. A similar name in another state is a question, not a match.
6. Check lobbying disclosures when the message is about legislation. The House disclosure site is lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov. Senate filings are searchable at lda.gov. A lobbying report can show a registrant, a client, and a general issue. It does not show that a particular post was part of that engagement unless the report, or another record, says so.

What the records can and cannot prove

Public records are good at names, dates, amounts, and the words a filer used. A Form 990, an FEC report, a registration, a lobbying filing, and an ad disclaimer can confirm that an organization exists, that a transaction was reported, or that a sponsor's name was attached to a placement. Put that sentence next to the document and the date you opened it.

Those same records usually cannot prove motive, secret control, or that every person who repeated the message was paid. They cannot turn a shared talking point into a conspiracy. They cannot show that disagreement with the message makes the speakers unreal. If two records conflict, keep both. If a field is blank, the finding is that the field was blank, not a guess about what belongs there.

Hypothetical example. A week of neighborhood posts all use one sentence about a bill. The ad library entry names a committee. The FEC report shows that committee paid a media vendor that week. The state registration shows the committee was formed the month before, with one registered agent. A careful memo says the posts match the disclaimer name, the committee reported a media payment, and the registration is recent. It does not say the neighbors were invented. That last sentence is not in the records.

How OppIntell fits the research

OppIntell's live research layer is built for this kind of file. Source-cited candidate profiles keep votes, quotes, and filings attached to the claim. Donor network mapping groups disclosed contributions so a reader can see concentration in a report without treating the grouping as proof of a private deal. Candidate comparison puts two profiles side by side when the question is a contrast, not a vibe. Contradiction flags point at two sourced records that sit in tension, and they stay attached to both records. An AI research assistant can help a team move through that material. The homepage describes the candidate universe as 24,000+ U.S. candidates.

Use the product to find and organize the public record. Still open the filing, the 990, the registration, and the disclaimer before a sentence ships. The product is not a substitute for the document, and this page is not legal advice.

Questions researchers ask

Start from the public record

OppIntell builds source-cited candidate profiles from public records. If you want a file a second person can check, use the contact form on the opposition research page.

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